Healthy Eating - Relay Foods

I mentioned a couple months ago that I wanted to start eating better. Then I went to a brief class where I learned you could make your own dairy foods in a non-dairy way. Then I became obsessed with learning about nutrition. Like seriously obsessed. I watched five health documentaries in one week. And the disturbing thing about watching so many documentaries and reading so many books, is to find that even though different people are making them, they're pretty much all saying the same things. Eat more plants, eat less animals (and animal-based foods).

Well that's an alarming recommendation to your typical American like myself. I found it almost depressing as I read about study after study on disease after disease that eating animal-based foods promotes. Depressing, not because I'm particularly attached to meat or milk, but because the idea of taking those things out of my diet (and possibly Erik's by proximity?) requires so much learning about alternatives. It's like the past 26 years of eating and then learning to cook, have to be relearned. And then the depression went away and I just became really angry and annoyed that our health institutions and government have done such a good job at hiding and belittling this information so that they can profit. Can you tell I was deeply affected by all this?

I don't want to rant or preach or anything like that on my blog. That's not what this is about. I'm actually just trying to explain what inspired my search for local, organic veggies. I have been inspired to change my diet, but I'm not trying to do it overnight because that's overwhelming. Instead I'm trying to add more good foods and educate myself so that I can make better choices. I enjoy visiting farmers markets, but honestly if I have a day that's likely to be busy it's Saturday, and that happens to be when the farmers markets tend to run as well. So I often miss them and it's sad. In comes Relay Foods. I heard about Relay on the radio of all places. They were offering your first local harvest box for $1. So I got home and signed up.

With Relay you can choose to have your box delivered or you can pick it up at one of a bajillion (okay maybe twenty?) locations. There was a location about 5 minutes from my house, so I saved my money and just picked it up. Easy peasy. And here's what I got:

I was particularly jazzed about the basil :)

I also added a few more herbs to my deck plant collection. And yes it was raining when I took these photos, but I thought it looked cool anyway :)

Basil, rosemary, MOJITO lime mint. It seriously smells like a mojito and I used it in limeade I made for a client meeting last week, and it rocked.

This is the chocolate mint I had last year that managed to survive the winter and grow back this year! Yes it does smell like an Andes mint. Can you tell I love mint? I put a sprig or five into my water glasses or tea all the time.

Then from left to right there's chives (also from last year that survived the winter), kale, and peppermint. Both the kale and peppermint came from the Chesterfield Berry Farm Market who just told me to take some plants with me for buying $10 worth of produce. Then in the green pot is my new tomato plant. I can't remember what kind of tomatoes they are. They're supposed to be like grape tomatoes, but a little larger. So we'll see what pops up!

If you're at all interested in learning more about nutrition and some of the scary things I learned, I'd recommend reading The China Study or watching Food Inc or Forks Over Knives. Be careful though. As an Amazon reviewer pointed out, this is like choosing the blue pill or the red pill and you won't be able to unlearn what you might find out! Is this dramatic? Yes. But hey, food's a big subject and we all love ice cream.

If you want to try Relay out for yourself (you should!), you can get $30 off of your first $50 order if you use this link: http://www.relayfoods.com/friend/mvyaha. I also get a discount when you use it, so it's highly encouraged :)

I love blogging. LOVE it. It's where I share my favorite images and my most personal stories. Blogging isn't for everyone, but I've been doing it for 15 years now, so I think it's safe to say the internet has become my diary. Enjoy the ridiculous run on sentences, overabundance of adjectives, and some pretty pictures too!

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